THE NE.W YORKER optimism during the last years, con- fessed to me over lunch one day early that month that he had finally sur- rendered to the prevailing opinion. "I don't know what lies behind the black mood of the Street," he said, "but I have finally come to share it. Have you read 'The Crash of '79'? Not the nuclear part, but the complete break- down, the wild inflation, that sort of thing? It's absurd, but that's the talk you hear these days. I won't add to that talk, but I don't think you can buck it." About ten days later, the stock market roared up one Friday, with more than fifty million shares changing hands-the largest volume ever until that point-and then broke that record the following Monday. Why? The talk on the Street was "All the bad news is now behind us." Or "The Arabs are finally hungry." Or "It was long overdue." Such is the quality of deep analysis by which the Street ex- plains itself to itself. T HE psychological history of capi- talism is a tale of alternating eu- phoria and despair We tend to think of the late nineteenth century as a period of huge self-confidence and ebullience, but the diaries of the captains of in- dustry reveal another mood just be- low the surface, a mood described by the economic historian E. C. Kirk- land as "panic and pain." When re- cessions struck, with their never quite predictable regularity, businessmen tore their collars and feared for the end. "All the fortune I have made has not served to compensate for the anxIety of that period," wrote John D Rocke- feller, looking back on forty years of a career that we think of as an unbroken series of triumphs. The labile business state of mind was no doubt the consequence in the first place of the con tin ual buffeting to which business was subject. But I sus- pect that there was another reason for it as well It was-and is-that capital- ism has never found a rationale that has entirely dispelled the anxieties of the business world as to the viability of the capitalist mechanism, again and again teetering at the edge of what has seemed like collapse; nor has capitalism ever gained a credo that could rescue it, once and for all, from the doubts and charges of its moral critics. The economics profession, writing at an Olympian level of abstraction after the eighteen-seventies, and concerning it- self more and more with problems of "equilibrium" and "pure competition," which have no counterpart in the real 65 Kimberly For the woman with a mind of her own. v< . ,/ .... , . . .,.$ .",<,- >>;t -:-:;: % "'; .". 'O ff \. t.. ,p .. :'., > , : '. .":l-... ....$- ',$ '. '!ó ./> *t 1 ) . .... .:$"$ :i:: "; ."<ov. \. " ...:....::::: ., . 7 ''''' ø- ..-:.: . .." < .\, Ñ.". '. ". ,.'L ... '.. <:c ..::: ....::::::: . j ,;. , ": Ñ ',.-... ::::W;: :;.: :: ;:t< $i': }' *. .d ; '" '01 .J" ^"" . ........ ::' =::::::'.: ..... t:: :::. . N N:.:., -- J,-, <" '- '{ . . >> -'-- '" -.- <I ... "- ':. "'.... ...- ". .). f. p '- " ?:; :;' :::: : :":" é {W::: The Kimberly woman has found the clothes that work beautifully with her multifaceted life Here, this soft sensational wool jersey dress you'll absolutely live in with ItS own vested interest Sizes 6-18 About $170 At Saks Fifth Avenue. Garflnckel's: Younkers: Fredenck & Nelson: Jacobson s and other fine stores I e